But at the same time, then he goes and says something like this:
"Socrates proved the immortality of the soul from the fact that the sickness of the soul (sin) does not consume it as the body's sickness consumes the body."
- The Sickness unto Death by Søren Fucking Kierkegaard, translated by Alastair Fucking Hannay
How am I supposed to evaluate a statement like that? It's just loopy. It's like saying "Socrates proved bacon was made out of rainbows from the fact that pigs do not crap lightning." It doesn't seem possible for a first-class mind like Kierkegaard to put forth reasoning like this in a book with his own name on it. It's like if Kierkegaard had a pseudonym for his philosophical erotica, maybe he might put that kind of reasoning out under that pen name. To keep the Kierkegaard brand relatively respectable, right? Put it out under a pen-name! If I were his editor, I'd have said, "Søren. You just can't put that in there. It's preposterous. Slip it into your next 'Lucien Dagways' caper, where people will be too distracted by all the existential nipple-licking to give it a serious critique."
I would have been an awesome editor for these big-name Serious Philosophers, man. Back when there were any!
So yes, I'm sure you could say "Joe. If there's one thing we know about Søren Fucking Kierkegaard, it's that he was a pretty sincere Christian. I think what we're seeing here, is his Christian perspective coloring his views on the existence of the soul - to some extent, this is only to be expected." Well maybe so. But that raises another problem.
Now I'm having a hard time taking Socrates seriously.
1 comment:
See, 'Lucien Dagways' is (to me) just a far superior pen-name to 'Anti-Climacus'. I mean, Anti-Climacus...that sounds like some kind of dude that the Fantastic Four might be called in to fight.
"There's only one chance for humanity, Reed! We've got to invoke the Null Hypothesis!"
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